I played on console and I didn't run into most of these. Certainly not often. Sounds like a hardware problem.
Finished Dark Souls: Disappointed with it's combat
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I have GTX 970 and i5 6500...not a killer machine, but more than adequate. As for "not for me", I've played a lot of action games, particularly hack&slashers, and usually evaluate each on how it functions based on it's own design goals. Closest to DS I've played is Severance and it's easily one of my favorites.Lunar Templar said:
Anyway...I did not want to be overly critical here and for everything I've listed here( and I'll admit there are some subjective points...I can see how it's UI/animation "clunkiness" as necessity, coming from being more strategically oriented next to most action games), there is at least one positive, combat wise. Game is obviously centered on melee, and there are plenty of variations there. I was more surprised by it, since I found DS fanbase on some sites (like Neogaf) a bit overzealous in criticism of combat systems in other games.
What impressed me the most is level design... in most games it is closer to a road with occasional fork, here you have layers and layers, interconnected with one another.
Also weapon scaling is really well handled... fixes most issues that rpg's have, open world in particular.
I can't complain if someone says they don't think a game deserves the rating it got but I agree with you on this. The idea that a perfect score means a game is in some way perfect doesn't make sense. To me a perfect game is one where you cannot imagine the addition or subtraction of any element would make the game significantly better. I don't know if that's true of the Souls games but people seem to have this idea that a perfect game is one that is everything to everyone. I find that criteria to be impossible (and indeed many people have said that no game ever made deserves 10/10 because of this impossibility) so what's the point? It's like arguing there's no such thing as a perfect hammer because it'd make a crappy screwdriver. That doesn't suggest there's anything wrong with the hammer but instead with our criteria. Same holds true for games I think.shrekfan246 said:
I think I've found your issue.Athennesi said:
Just because you like one game, or a genre or style of gameplay, doesn't mean that you'll automatically be a fan of everything that's even vaguely in the same category.
Despite how it appears on the tin, Dark Souls is not a hack&slash game. If you try to view it or play it like you would Devil May Cry or Bayonetta, you're going to have a bad time. It is the epitome of action-roleplaying (at least, for people whose rigid definition of "RPG" doesn't include immense amounts of dialogue).
This is another reason people tend to be forgiving of the issues with the game. It's been referred to, popularly by Yahtzee but also by many others over the years, as the best 3D Castlevania game, and that's for a reason. While I personally do like the combat of the game, it and the subsequent discussion about difficulty is but a drop in the bucket of why I actually love the game as much as I do, which is largely for its world.
I mean, everyone has their own preferences that allows them to decide where they would "rate" something, but yeah. If you're using a 10-point scale, you need to be willing to utilize the entire scale, or else you just get the sliding point system that people have been decrying in video games reviews for years now already.Gorrath said:
If "10/10" = "Perfect, universally appealing and with no flaws", then it becomes a useless number. So you're working with 0-9; more realistically 1-9, since "0/10" would mean that the game is probably so broken that it doesn't even launch, or causes some sort of catastrophic failure. More common than a 10 would be, but still rare enough to be pointless. And then 1-4/10 are generally just reserved for games that could hardly qualify as games for one reason or another while 5/6 get used for the games that are somewhat proficient but have massive bugs that hinder the experience, because everyone knows that bland, mediocre games don't "deserve" to get such low scores, and 7 is the cookie cutter number used for cookie cutter games that do everything we've already seen before and oh boy, look where we are, the current state of reviews.
You Can said:
I get why people are discussing real weapon weight since someone mentioned Souls having "weight" to and a realistic "feel" to its combat, but it's not meant to be a "realistic" representation. The game world is dark fantasy, meaning who knows how much a Demon Great Machete or Tower Shield would weigh. Probably quite a bit more than the heaviest known real world broadsword or shield, which is why the game treats it that way.
I think my 10 point scale (not that I'd use one, I'd go the Yahtzee route) would go something like this:shrekfan246 said:
1: Broken to the point of unplayability. How it even came out in this state is a head scratcher. Even basic functionality is broken. Ala a certain infamous trucker racing game.
2: Bad, barely works. Basic functionality but so bugged/bland/broken that the gameplay makes the whole thing a waste of time. Ala Superman 64.
3: Bad game design makes the otherwise functioning game boring as all hell. Some bugs may interfere with gameplay but aren't so bad that one can't manage even basic tasks. I'm thinking Ride to Hell level of shitty.
4: Below average game. Some bugs may annoy but they are few. Mediocrity abounds, ala Colonial Marines.
5: Average game with everything you'd expect. Nothing stands out, gameplay is a copy of a copy. Press button to not die.
6: Would be an average game but is elevated just a bit by art/sound design, story or premise. For my speed this would be something like Saints Row 3. A bit too much like a poor man's GTA but with some design elements to elevate it above mediocrity.
7: A good, solid example of a genre or a game that breaks new ground, if a bit clunky. This is where I'd put your Fallout 3/Oblivion/Fable/Kingdoms of Alomar quality of games. Lots of big promises that aren't lived up to but still a meaty game, bugs not withstanding.
8: Really good game that provides lots of immersion, has great design aesthetics and works well most of the time. This is where I'd drop something like the new XCOM games, Darksouls, Sims 3, Mass Effect, DA:O.
9: Ground breaking game that either pushes a genre to a new height or invents a new genre, ala Starcraft, Diablo 2, SMB3, Tactics Ogre.
10: An exemplar of its genre. In running for greatest of all time. Taking anything away or adding something would seem to harm the game more than help. Tetris, Portal, Ocarina of Time, Finaly Fantasy 6, Chrono Trigger, Atari's E.T. The Extra Terrestrial.
Oh! The console version has its own share of problems (the framerate drops at Blightown are legendary).Ariseishirou said:
About the combat, yeah. Fans tend to confuse "good" with "appropriate". DS is the later: appropiate to the DS gameplay concept. If you don't enjoy its concept, the combat will be annoying.
PS: You CAN shoot with bows in first-person perspective.
Well, I think it's a bit of a masterpiece and one of the most profoundly rewarding games I've played in my life (the gaming part of which goes back to the mid/late '80's), so methinks 'it's not just for you but was for me' suffices.
The camera's not magically awesome, or anything, but I never felt I was fighting it as opposed to Lordran's denizens.
For me the lock on was wonderfully agile, once you got used to it; a canny DS fighter learns when to fight with it, and when to fight without. Both techniques are essential for high[er] level play.
Arkham's combat was superb, but unless you're on an NG+ run without the prompts or diving in to the more demanding challenge rooms, its combat was little more than a rhythm game; keep jabbing the right buttons and you'll string together a 100+ combo. DS has a kind of cut'n'thrust positional brutality, so the two systems are incomparable.
And no, I had none of those issues. DSII's parries were flaky, but the less said about that entry the better... DS1's windows were varied depending on weapon, but I feel they were often generous, and arguably OP. Fishing for backstabs could arguably undermine the entire flow of combat, too, but for the most part I feel it was reasonably well implemented.
Oh, but yes, the slide-into-position was clunky, but there was a precision to its triggering that DS2, f'instance, never had.
DS's combat was not geared to archery, any novice can surely see that. Bows in DS are often superb ways to draw and control enemy aggro, or - if the player didn't use the binoculars - they provided another means of looking around the world, zooming in to possible enemies or choke points and so on.
By the later stages, the larger bows (the greatbows being obvious examples) could be very potent, but if the player was patient and/or cheap, arrows could be used to whittle down enemies. They gave the player another tactical choice about how to proceed, and how to deal with the numbers and types of threats waiting ahead. I think bows were a remarkably subtle piece of great design.
Magic is certainly not a dynamic part of DS1's design, but felt it could still lead to interesting playstyles; magic could be used to light the way, to navigate the world in slightly more risky ways, to manipulate enemies, or simply confound them in the middle of a scrap to facilitate an escape.
To me Dark Souls [1] was meticulous, measured, machined, in a wonderfully beguiling mix of approximated realism (the setting, weapons/armour, elements of the actual combat) and absolute artifice (placement of enemies, no real punishment for deaths, the static NPC's forever locked into place, etc).
One could argue highly adaptive dynamic AI would've made the game 'better', but it would have changed its character/soul; Lordran had 'rules', and cause and consequence was almost its immutable law. You could struggle with certain enemies, and you'd know it was pretty much your fault... That you had to react to the world ranged against you, that you always had a chance to learn and to overcome. At times DS was almost a logic/puzzle game - an area and a foe to be solved.
Most RPG's treat swords and spears or halberds as identical in locational function; they are just different items which cause different kinds or amounts of damage. In DS? A claymore is a very clumsy instrument in a winding staircase, ditto a spear.
In real fencing the 'speed' which most videogames are obsessed by is rather meaningless; 'speed' typically equates to reach in fencing, ergo a spearman can strike 'quicker' - sooner in the engagment - than a swordsman (and waving a dagger around is meaningless if you can't get close enough to use it). Dark Souls' combat system is very gamey, and very simple, but I've never played a game of its kind which had a feel for that element of reach being so important, and of forcing the player to abide by the functional realities of melee weapon combat (e.g. broad horizontal attacks in a stairwell or corridor will just get you killed; what matters in fencing isn't what you want to do or what is fancifully 'best', it's what works in a given place, at a given time, with a given weapon. DS uses the idea of tempo/range superbly, if quite crudely given it's still just a game with set attacks and defence postures).
One of the reasons was I found it to be an incredibly compelling existential experience; much of DS's themes relate to purpose of action, and the possible attainment of goals. The player is presented with a world, yet very little reason for being [there]. 'What's my motivation?', the player could, and probably always does, say. Lordran's fellow travelers mostly seek something, be it tangible or otherwise. Typically, when they have found it - when they have reached the perceived summit of their aims - they crumble, or are broken by the world.
And why fight the hordes, when the hordes reset after your death? Was the fight futile if you all your efforts are wiped clean? In a 'meaningless' world, I found the smallest of actions and decisions came to have great meaning (there was no 'point' in bowing to NPC's I was allied with, yet to me it always had value because it was a choice of respect and expressed gratitude/empathy), and after a couple of runs I appreciated how the game's thematic subtext may be interpretatively summed up with 'find value/meaning in the act of the journey, not in obtaining something or concluding the journey'.
To me, Dark Souls was a genuinely affecting and profound experience, and it's a gaming journey I'll remember fondly for many years to come. There's been nothing else quite like it.
The world is wonderfully indifferent to your very existence, and to every accomplishment. Kinda like the real world? We die, and in a few decades or generations our very existences will be little more than memories, or fragments of history, half remembered, half documented. The world keeps spinning, life keeps getting lived, regardless of what seismic events happen to us individually. So to me, Lordran was paradoxically 'real' whilst being demonstrably gamey, which I found fascinating.
I came to value them as experiences, almost like narrative punctuations as opposed to just bland videogame bosses, but if there was ever a remastered version I would like to see all the bosses get beefed up a bit. O&S still wiped the floor with me a fair few times, though... and on my first run I was painfully terrible against the Stray Demon at the Asylum.
...or just tanking with Havel's gear, but again, that's a player choice essentially shaping diff to their own requirements. DS so often gave the play choice about how to deal with Lordran.
I'm not sure I died a single time across about 300hrs of DS[1] due to camera, so--- er, I can only offer a quizical shrug to that complaint?Athennesi said:
The camera's not magically awesome, or anything, but I never felt I was fighting it as opposed to Lordran's denizens.
Never had those issues, either. I was playing on 360, btw, and then for a little while on XB1.
For me the lock on was wonderfully agile, once you got used to it; a canny DS fighter learns when to fight with it, and when to fight without. Both techniques are essential for high[er] level play.
Um... You're comparing it to a largely skill-less combat system in an arcade game? Why?
Arkham's combat was superb, but unless you're on an NG+ run without the prompts or diving in to the more demanding challenge rooms, its combat was little more than a rhythm game; keep jabbing the right buttons and you'll string together a 100+ combo. DS has a kind of cut'n'thrust positional brutality, so the two systems are incomparable.
And no, I had none of those issues. DSII's parries were flaky, but the less said about that entry the better... DS1's windows were varied depending on weapon, but I feel they were often generous, and arguably OP. Fishing for backstabs could arguably undermine the entire flow of combat, too, but for the most part I feel it was reasonably well implemented.
Oh, but yes, the slide-into-position was clunky, but there was a precision to its triggering that DS2, f'instance, never had.
"Should be"? Any reason something "should be" in a game? It's a matter of taste, for designers and players. I loved the slow brutality and weight to backstabs, in particular, and they tended to feel like tiny moments to catch one's breath if you were still defending yourself, given you could whip the camera around to gauge the next threat.
Well, there was an aim function, soo...
DS's combat was not geared to archery, any novice can surely see that. Bows in DS are often superb ways to draw and control enemy aggro, or - if the player didn't use the binoculars - they provided another means of looking around the world, zooming in to possible enemies or choke points and so on.
By the later stages, the larger bows (the greatbows being obvious examples) could be very potent, but if the player was patient and/or cheap, arrows could be used to whittle down enemies. They gave the player another tactical choice about how to proceed, and how to deal with the numbers and types of threats waiting ahead. I think bows were a remarkably subtle piece of great design.
Spellslinging is certainly often considered DS's Easy Mode, and whilst for a while I saw that as a negative, I think George Weidman/Extra Credits/Sterling (can't recall which. I think they've all touched on this aspect of the game and series) did a piece on how DS1 essentially offers the player a dynamic difficulty setting, and that comes from the builds and the use or non-use of certain armour types or attack disciplines.
Magic is certainly not a dynamic part of DS1's design, but felt it could still lead to interesting playstyles; magic could be used to light the way, to navigate the world in slightly more risky ways, to manipulate enemies, or simply confound them in the middle of a scrap to facilitate an escape.
It depends on what someone wishes from their experience.
To me Dark Souls [1] was meticulous, measured, machined, in a wonderfully beguiling mix of approximated realism (the setting, weapons/armour, elements of the actual combat) and absolute artifice (placement of enemies, no real punishment for deaths, the static NPC's forever locked into place, etc).
One could argue highly adaptive dynamic AI would've made the game 'better', but it would have changed its character/soul; Lordran had 'rules', and cause and consequence was almost its immutable law. You could struggle with certain enemies, and you'd know it was pretty much your fault... That you had to react to the world ranged against you, that you always had a chance to learn and to overcome. At times DS was almost a logic/puzzle game - an area and a foe to be solved.
Can't say much to that as I don't agree, or, rather, what you wrote doesn't match my own hundreds of hours.
Oh? They are "illogical"? Why? What logic do long dead servants of a fallen city and god/s operate under, and how can you discern this? Again, to me the enemy placements are like that of a puzzle. The world and its denizens are there to grief you, you savage you for mistakes. To me there is perfect design logic to the famed/infamous Anor Londo archers.
Well, I'd say DS's combat is amongst the most 'realistic' I've ever seen in a game.
Most RPG's treat swords and spears or halberds as identical in locational function; they are just different items which cause different kinds or amounts of damage. In DS? A claymore is a very clumsy instrument in a winding staircase, ditto a spear.
In real fencing the 'speed' which most videogames are obsessed by is rather meaningless; 'speed' typically equates to reach in fencing, ergo a spearman can strike 'quicker' - sooner in the engagment - than a swordsman (and waving a dagger around is meaningless if you can't get close enough to use it). Dark Souls' combat system is very gamey, and very simple, but I've never played a game of its kind which had a feel for that element of reach being so important, and of forcing the player to abide by the functional realities of melee weapon combat (e.g. broad horizontal attacks in a stairwell or corridor will just get you killed; what matters in fencing isn't what you want to do or what is fancifully 'best', it's what works in a given place, at a given time, with a given weapon. DS uses the idea of tempo/range superbly, if quite crudely given it's still just a game with set attacks and defence postures).
Again, never had an issue. I also tended to play heavily hybrid characters, too, so your specific mention of issues with hybrid builds doesn't chime with me.
As above; never had an issue. From the looks of it, DS3 might have some of the best damn hitboxes evah, but aside from various demons 'butt slams' I never legitimately had an enemy hitbox strike that I could honestly whine about. To me, DS's specificity of contact - for you, and for the enemies - was arguably the foundational building block of the entire experience (arguably the backstabs were the weakest element of that experience, simply because of how simple and effective they were against numerous enemies. still, they were a tool in the players choice - to use or not to use).
Well, as I said, to me it's one of the most rewarding gaming experiences of my life, so subjectivity is as subjective does.
One of the reasons was I found it to be an incredibly compelling existential experience; much of DS's themes relate to purpose of action, and the possible attainment of goals. The player is presented with a world, yet very little reason for being [there]. 'What's my motivation?', the player could, and probably always does, say. Lordran's fellow travelers mostly seek something, be it tangible or otherwise. Typically, when they have found it - when they have reached the perceived summit of their aims - they crumble, or are broken by the world.
And why fight the hordes, when the hordes reset after your death? Was the fight futile if you all your efforts are wiped clean? In a 'meaningless' world, I found the smallest of actions and decisions came to have great meaning (there was no 'point' in bowing to NPC's I was allied with, yet to me it always had value because it was a choice of respect and expressed gratitude/empathy), and after a couple of runs I appreciated how the game's thematic subtext may be interpretatively summed up with 'find value/meaning in the act of the journey, not in obtaining something or concluding the journey'.
To me, Dark Souls was a genuinely affecting and profound experience, and it's a gaming journey I'll remember fondly for many years to come. There's been nothing else quite like it.
...perhaps if you stopped to reflect about the possible futility of your actions/achievements/non-achievements, you may have begun to see that loop a little differently. As I elaborated on above; to me that's not just a game mechanic, it became a--- well, philosophical prompt, to get a tad pretentious... One that fitted hand-in-glove with the stories/journeys of the NPC's the player crosses paths with.
The world is wonderfully indifferent to your very existence, and to every accomplishment. Kinda like the real world? We die, and in a few decades or generations our very existences will be little more than memories, or fragments of history, half remembered, half documented. The world keeps spinning, life keeps getting lived, regardless of what seismic events happen to us individually. So to me, Lordran was paradoxically 'real' whilst being demonstrably gamey, which I found fascinating.
Er, no. All actions have weight and a time window to them, that isn't the same as 'lag' when it's meticulously designed into the system. You either like it or do not, but it isn't a flaw. I loved it, as I'm sick of arcadey flapping around in combat, particularly where bladed weapons are concerned.
I adore many of the aesthetic designs, but the actual patterns and challenges of the bosses in DS1 certainly isn't a strong point, I'll grant you that.
I came to value them as experiences, almost like narrative punctuations as opposed to just bland videogame bosses, but if there was ever a remastered version I would like to see all the bosses get beefed up a bit. O&S still wiped the floor with me a fair few times, though... and on my first run I was painfully terrible against the Stray Demon at the Asylum.
The idea that positioning in Dark Souls wasn't important because of i-frames is bizarre to me, but each to their own. I-frames were part of the system, and I don't see how their use or non-use was a negative. If you're terribly positioned, no i-frame in the world's going to really save your ass if your next dive is into their weapon, off a cliff, or into another enemy. Decision making was still what killed you or kept you alive in tough situations.
...or just tanking with Havel's gear, but again, that's a player choice essentially shaping diff to their own requirements. DS so often gave the play choice about how to deal with Lordran.
Perhaps because a "top tier combat system" isn't where DS's brilliance begins or ends? A rather glib reply, I admit, and one certainly made by a fan of the first game (and Demon's Souls, even if I never got to play it) but DS's combat was just one part of the whole.
Eh, I think we can agree that Anor Londo is one of the least intuitive places in the game. Blighttown was a ***** to go through, but at least you pretty much always had something guiding you, whether it just be a simple direction of going down or the platforms of refuse in the lake of shit. Londo is just "fuck you"-ville with how they decided platforming on butresses when you haven't done anything nearly that small or with that kind of pressure before then.Darth Rosenberg said:
I get that, and from a game-play perspective appreciate what it adds, the slower more methodical combat is interesting though not my preferred system. The idea that it is in anyway "realistic" however is utter nonsense, swords are very, very, fast and things like spears are even faster.hanselthecaretaker said:
The combat in Dark Souls is OK. It's nothing special. Having come in from Mount and Blade the impact of it felt fine but the lack of directional swings and parry and momentum based damage was seriously doing my head in. It's not really a game you play for its combat though. You play Dark Souls for atmospherics.
I never said it was "realistic". In fact I said it was never meant to be, being that it's steeped in dark medieval fantasy lore. There are a wide variety of weapons of greatly varying weight, and likewise greatly varying quickness in the series. Even in a fantasy game it's reasonable to expect that these factors would influence utilization in terms of combat stats.You Can said:
This whole argument seemed to start by a questioning of the logic that the heaviest of them should require much greater strength, and that therefore they could only be wielded at a fraction of the speed that a normal sword or spear could. The point I'm trying to make is that a game can be based in fantasy and still retain some logic of real world physics.
The original Dark Souls is definitely a little rough around the edges but that's part of its charm. The only gripe I had with the game was everything post-Lordvessel which felt very lacklustre to everything that preceded it. Demon's Souls felt much more polished in comparison. Perspective probably changes as time moves on but I remember when Demon's Souls originally came out that I was absolutely mesmerized by the combat and atmosphere. Same for Dark Souls and it's more cohesive world structure.
If you play these games at a later date I would always recommend to play the newest one(in this case DkS3 and Bloodborne) and then work your way back if you really love them. Espescially DkS3 plays very much like a 'Super Dark Souls World' and is a lot more polished and streamlined than the original. Doesn't quite have the surprise factor of the original but you can argue how much of that is intact 5 years after release anyway(you must have really avoided gaming related sites entirely).
No game ever holds up after close scrutiny but that's besides the point. Dark Souls draws players in like very few other games do with very satisfying combat and a persistently intriguing and wholly authentic game world that inspires and lingers in people's thoughts long after playing. For any game I can't really think of a higher compliment.
If you play these games at a later date I would always recommend to play the newest one(in this case DkS3 and Bloodborne) and then work your way back if you really love them. Espescially DkS3 plays very much like a 'Super Dark Souls World' and is a lot more polished and streamlined than the original. Doesn't quite have the surprise factor of the original but you can argue how much of that is intact 5 years after release anyway(you must have really avoided gaming related sites entirely).
No game ever holds up after close scrutiny but that's besides the point. Dark Souls draws players in like very few other games do with very satisfying combat and a persistently intriguing and wholly authentic game world that inspires and lingers in people's thoughts long after playing. For any game I can't really think of a higher compliment.
I'm afraid we've wound up arguing about an agreement... I agree with you absolutely, it makes sense in-world and that's all that matters, but the idea that the combat is realistic that is a claim that is thrown around all the time (not by you) and it really... isn't. Again I think the combat is fine, its essentially Zelda for grownups!hanselthecaretaker said:
Well, we clearly don't agree on the underlined, and I've never seen the big deal with those archers, in particular (I died the first time firing off Heal when I hadn't even spotted them, but then died maybe a handful of times across all my DS playing, and couple were most likely stupidly rolling off the edge, which is purely my fault). What else about Anor Londo aren't you keen on?Redryhno said:
Yeah, I kind of second this. After the pain and suffering of Blighttown and the platform fuckery of Sens Fortress,I was kind of happy to be able to spend some time in a civilized area with few death drops and some fricken light for once. Not to mention enemies I could actually maneuver when I fought them.Darth Rosenberg said:
The archers annoyed the crap out of me until I realized that 1.) You only have to kill the one on the right and 2.) There's a spot where they can't hit you but you can totally snipe one of them to death. Enjoy those Poison arrows, Jerks.
I agree entirely with the OP. I found the combat very dull and boring. As he mentioned, the camera and crappy hit detection don't add to my enjoyment either, but more so to my annoyance.
Most of Anor Londo isn't the difficulty,I'd argue it's one of easier areas in the game in terms of combat, just the obtuseness and annoyance factor's been turned up all the way for that area. The gargoyles are a pain in the ass, the vertical bridge, while a neat idea, is just a gigantic ME elevator sequence that you have to start and stop after running to it. The platforming, while neat in the cathedral, isn't all that clear before then on where to go. Visually I love the place, I just despise how it becomes the second nexus of the game because of how long it takes to get anywhere. Firelink you can go pretty much anywhere and it isn't a five minute walk to get to the door that opens to the next hallway you get to run through for five more minutes.Darth Rosenberg said:
The one thing I hated and loved about Dark Souls is the loss of progress. I like that your resources are lost and you can get them back with enough grinding, but Londo is just full of mooks that aren't fun to fight to get them back. You can run past them sure, but I've always felt that breaks the spirit of the game. And I can't just ignore that rule and run away like Valley of Drakes and Blightown where fighting everything is a slow slog whether you win or lose.
I would've also added in O&S like two years ago, but my second playthrough I found out how much fun it is to fight Ornstein alone and how fucking worth it it is to kill him second. Spears are some of my favorite weapons and his becomes the cornerstone of alot of my builds.